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Patel Quickly Going Down In Flames, While Trying To Please His Owner

Whoever Kash Patel is, he is no J. Edgar Hoover.

Patel is, however, the fawning, under-qualified director of the FBI who fancies himself a Rambo character, wearing army camouflage fatigues, sunglasses and an FBI cap and shirt at ceremonies and who has mirrored trump, using his position to persecute officials and intimidate reporters who have not bowed down to trump.

Patel has profited off of his position and relationships and has had a meteoric rise that has made him rich; he has trafficked in far right conspiracies; he has filed multiple lawsuits claiming he has been defamed; and he has become embroiled in allegations of personal indiscretions, including excess drinking and failure to show up for work.

The latest published revelations have led Democratic lawmakers to ask Patel to undergo the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test and submit the results to the committee by April 28. The 10-question screening test was developed by the World Health Organization (WHO) to identify “hazardous and harmful patterns of alcohol consumption” in respondents.

Patel’s brief and troubled tenure as FBI chief may soon be little more than a footnote as various reports have said that Patel may be the next high ranking official to be thrown under the bus by trump. The administration has had a recent flurry of dismissals and resignations, including Attorney General Pam Bondi, Homeland Security Director Kristi Noem, Navy Secretary John Phelan and Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer.

“The reality is that this cabinet’s out of control incompetence and corruption have made it the worst cabinet since 1776, and Kash Patel is next,” said Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif.

Patel, 46, arrived on the Washington, D.C., political scene during trump’s first reign and he has devolved into one of trump’s loudest lickspittles. He was named FBI director and confirmed by the Senate in 2025, as the first person of South Asian descent to serve as FBI director.

Patel’s latest actions are early Christmas gifts for neo-Nazis and white supremacists, who have been targeted by groups like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Patel’s efforts are in line with trump’s claims that the prior Biden administration’s enforcement efforts were biased against conservative and Christian groups.

Patel wrote in an Oct. 1, 2025, message on X that “(Former FBI Director) James Comey wrote ‘love letters’ to the ADL and embedded FBI agents with them — a group that ran disgraceful ops spying on Americans. That era is OVER. This FBI won’t partner with political fronts masquerading as watchdogs.”

Directed by trump and instigated by conservatives including Elon Musk, Patel has promoted political persecutions and has doubled down on attacks on the two historic civil rights groups.

Patel has ordered the FBI to cut all ties with the SPLC, which he labeled a “partisan smear machine” and with the ADL, which Patel called a political group “masquerading as watchdogs.”

The ADL earned the ire of trump, Musk and Patel for including the late far right martyr, Charlie Kirk and his right-wing Turning Point USA as a “case study of the hard right.” Kirk was assassinated last September at a speaking engagement in Utah.

The ADL has long been a thorn in the side of trump, et al. In early January 2021, the ADL called for trump’s removal in response to the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol by trump supporters.

The SPLC’s relationship with the right wing also has a long history as it targeted various far right hate groups. As a result, the right wing claimed the SPLC was bigoted in not equally challenging left wing groups. That was because the ground is fertile with far right groups and not nearly as populated with the left wing.

Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, accused the SPLC of “manufacturing racism to justify its existence.” The racism didn’t need to be manufactured; it was in full view in all its ugliness.

Patel and the rest went beyond simply cutting connections with the SPLC. Last week, the Justice Department charged the SPLC with doing what it was supposed to do, infiltrate hate groups and pass the information on to the authorities.

The trump government sees the SPLC as having its own far left agenda and last week charged it with financial crimes, accusing it of defrauding donors by using their money to secretly pay informants inside extremist organizations.

The SPLC, based in Birmingham, Ala., was formed in 1971 and is known for investigating groups like the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacy organizations. Bryan Fair, the SPLC interim chief executive, said the center was being targeted for political reasons and that trump had “made no secret of who they want to protect and who they want to destroy.”

The SPLC has been literally attacked before for its efforts to combat hate groups. In July 1983, the SPLC headquarters was firebombed, destroying the building and records. In 1984, SPLC Director Morris Dees was an assassination target of the Order, a revolutionary white supremacist group. Dee said that by 2007, more than 30 people had been jailed in connection with plots to kill him or to blow up SPLC offices.

The ADL was founded in late September 1913. In the 1930s, the ADL worked with the American Jewish Committee (AJC) to oppose pro-Nazi activity in the United States. It opposed McCarthyism during the Cold War, and campaigned for major civil rights legislation in the 1960s. During this period, it also worked with the NAACP to discredit far-right organizations such as the John Birch Society. In the 1970s, the ADL partnered with FBI field offices, sharing information learned from the monitoring of extremist groups.

Loyal Patel

An unflinching trump loyalist, Patel has promoted conspiracy theories about the deep state, the 2020 presidential election, and the January 6 Capitol attack by trump supporters. He claimed falsely that Ray Epps, a member of the Oath Keepers, was a secret FBI agent, involved in the attack on the Capitol.

Patel created the Kash Foundation to help pay legal costs for those charged in connection with the foiled insurrection. He has been accused of being affiliated with the QAnon conspiracy and has spoken at the ReAwaken America Tour, a far-right event that promotes QAnon.

Patel’s possible involvement in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol remains unclear. Documents from the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack noted that Patel discussed security at the Capitol before and during the foiled insurrection and repeatedly contacted Mark Meadows, trump’s chief of staff, on the day of the attack. Meadows was held in criminal contempt of Congress on Dec. 14, 2021, for refusing to cooperate with the January 6 Select Committee. On November 9, 2025, trump pardoned Meadows.

After five years with the Department of Justice, Patel was named as senior aide to Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Patel caught trump’s attention and his star began rising after he was the lead author of the Nunes memo, which alleged that FBI officials abused their authority in the FBI investigation into links between associates of trump and Russian officials.

As an aide to Nunes, Patel also investigated the debunked theory that Ukrainians were generating information about Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election.

Nunes left Congress to serve from January 2022 to April 2026 as the chief executive officer of the Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG). Last week, Nunes was replaced as CEO after the company lost more than $1 billion since going public two years ago. Patel was named in April 2022 to the board of TMTG.

Financial Windfall

After trump left office in January 2021, Patel used his association with trump to prosper through business ventures and regular appearances on podcasts. Published reports put Patel’s net worth at as much as $15 million.

Patel was the host of Kash’s Corner, from 2021 to 2023, a show on EpochTV, a streaming service operated by the Falun Gong-affiliated newspaper *The Epoch Times*. Falun Gong is a religious movement founded in China in the early 1990s. The movement opposes the Chinese Communist Party and has promoted conspiracy theories including QAnon and anti-vaccine information and has run ads for trump. The Falun Gong has drawn attention in Europe for promoting far-right politicians, primarily in France and Germany.

Patel managed Trishul, a consulting company whose clients included the government of Qatar. The firm earned more than $2 million but it was unclear how much came from Qatar.

Patel also is a consultant for Elite Depot, described as a “fashion management company” that was founded in China. Elite Depot owns Shein, a Chinese fast-fashion retailer that has been accused of using forced labor. Patel holds between $1 million and $5 million in Elite Depot stock.

He also created the nonprofit, Kash Foundation, to help pay legal costs of participants charged in the January 6 attack on the Capitol by trump supporters. The foundation co-produced “Justice for All,” a charity record by trump and a choir of men in prison in connection with the attack on the Capitol. Patel also was a political consultant for Save America and Friends, which is led by disgraced, former Florida Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz.

The Kash Foundation, branded as K$H, sells merchandise including beanies, scarves, hoodies and playing cards. The foundation raised nearly $1.3 million in 2023 but spent only $212,821 providing “financial and legal assistance for whistle-blowers, needy families and education.”

Patel also did consultant work for The Czechoslovak Group, a foreign arms conglomerate known as CSG. The prior administration accused CSG of having “ties to the inner circle of Russian President Vladimir Putin.” In 2024, CSG was one of the world’s largest manufacturers of small arms ammunition, which was exported to more than 70 countries, including NATO states and Ukraine.

After he was sworn in as FBI director, Patel quickly began following the dictates outlined in Project 2025, a political blueprint by the right-wing Heritage Foundation aimed at reshaping the federal government through policy changes, personnel vetting, and executive actions.

Patel fired civil service executives and replaced them with political allies. He lowered recruitment standards, including removing the bachelor’s degree requirement, to enable the bureau to focus more on street crime.

Patel also got rid of three FBI agents who were involved in the investigation of trump’s involvement in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The former agents have sued Patel and Bondi for wrongful termination. In the lawsuit, Patel acknowledged that the firings were retaliatory, potentially illegal, and in violation of FBI protocols that protect agents from political retribution. The same month, Patel fired about 20 agents, including those who were photographed kneeling amid the George Floyd protests.

In September 2025, the right-wing political activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated at Utah Valley University. Before a suspect was arrested, Patel falsely posted on X that a suspect was in custody. The erroneous post came at a time of scrutiny of Patel’s leadership.

Patel was subpoenaed in 2022 by a federal grand jury investigating trump’s retention of classified documents and his phone records were subpoenaed. Last month, a group of FBI agents were terminated who had been involved in investigating trump’s hoarding of classified documents. Trump has insisted he was entitled to keep the documents when he left the White House and has claimed without evidence that he had declassified them. Patel also said that trump had declassified the trove, including many stored in non-secure rooms at trump’s Mar-a-Lago castle in Florida. The case was dismissed by US District Court Judge Aileen Cannon who ruled the appointment of special counsel, Jack Smith had been unconstitutional.

Lawsuits And Criticism

In the past year, Patel has been the subject of significant criticism, including abuse of his office.

Patel has responded to the criticism in lockstep with trump’s malice toward the “fake” media and his efforts to bully reporters not to write negative stories. Before becoming FBI director, Patel equated journalists to the “most powerful enemy that the United States has ever seen” in a 2024 speech.

Patel has ordered an FBI investigation of a New York Times reporter who wrote a blockbuster story that Patel used bureau personnel to provide his girlfriend with government security and transportation. Agents recommended moving forward to determine whether the reporter, Elizabeth Williamson, broke federal stalking laws.

In 2025, Patel flew on a government jet to Scotland to play golf at the Carnegie Club with friends and took several flights to a private hunting ranch in Texas. In November 2025, Patel reportedly used the bureau’s jet to see his girlfriend, Alexis Wilkins, a country western singer, perform in Pennsylvania. Later that month, the FBI confirmed it had assigned a SWAT team of FBI agents to Wilkins as bodyguards.

In February 2026, Patel traveled to the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy where videos posted online showed him chugging beer and celebrating with the U.S. men’s hockey team in their locker room after they won the gold medal.

Like his mentor, Patel has been lawsuit-happy against media organizations and individuals. Since 2019, Patel has sued Politico (2019), CNN (2021), the Department of Defense (2020 and 2022), former Assistant FBI Director Frank Figliuzzi (2026) and The Atlantic (2026).

Patel sued Politico for $25 million, claiming that Politico falsely claimed that Patel misrepresented himself as a Ukraine expert and fed lies to trump about Ukraine, leading to trump’s first impeachment. The case is pending in court.

Patel’s suit demanding $50 million in damages against CNN claims the news organization falsely portrayed Patel as a key player in a secret plan to obtain classified Russia investigation materials. A resolution of the suit was unclear.

In 2020, he sued the defense department for allegedly refusing to release documents that Patel had requested under the Freedom of Information Act. No ruling has been reported. In 2022, Patel again sued and claimed the defense department had withheld or delayed releasing records related to his service. The resolution also was unclear.

In June 2025, Patel filed a defamation lawsuit against Frank Figliuzzi, a former FBI assistant director, over comments Figliuzzi made in an interview suggesting that Patel spent more time in nightclubs than at FBI headquarters. In his lawsuit, Patel said he had “not spent a single minute inside of a nightclub” since becoming director. A federal judge in the Southern District of Texas dismissed the lawsuit.

In April 2026, Patel sued The Atlantic magazine and reporter Sarah Fitzpatrick for defamation over an article alleging that Patel had excessive drinking episodes and unexplained absences from work. Patel is seeking $250 million in damages. Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee have demanded that Patel take an alcohol abuse assessment and share the results with Congress.

The story said that on “multiple occasions” Patel’s security team had difficulty waking him and at one point forcibly opened a building when Patel was unreachable behind closed doors.

The lawsuit showed that Patel has another thing in common with trump. He also has a hard time with spelling grammar. A published report refers to “typos” and “bad grammar” in the lawsuit against The Atlantic. The 19-page suit contains multiple spelling errors, including writing the word “feeble” as “feable” and the word “discussed” as “dicussed.” The lawsuit also accuses the outlet of violating its own “politices,” rather than “policies.”